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Clarity

Kevin McCarthy - BlindSpot Zone (.com)

Portland, Oregon

Former CEO, COO, CTO & President with many "learning experiences" and a number of nice successes to draw upon. Co-founded and developed the 13th largest Century 21 franchise in the United States. Conceived and developed the first automated website builder for real estate prior to realtor.com's arrival to the market. Founded a private dot com business and sold it to a publicly held company. Pioneered several divisions for client companies. Trained thousands of solo entrepreneurs and small teams throughout North America and abroad.

Answers

I have been partnered with an offshore development center in India for four years on behalf of a couple clients. I have also used elance and managed development projects with developers from Pakistan, Guatemala, Romania, and China. I would not use any of them again except the ODC in India.

They provide outsource, offshore developers that work directly with you or your onshore team leader while you work directly with me to make the arrangements and make sure the relationship and work runs smoothly.

If you are looking for development on a budget, give me a free call using the link below.

OpenERP and Zoho are both fragmented modular systems that can be very confusing. Without knowing your industry and complete set of needs, have you considered NetSuite, Sage, MS Dynamics, Aptean or Epicor?

Aside from feature sets, implementation and ongoing support and training are critical elements to consider. The other big challenge is getting buy-in from the users.

Have you considered starting with an open source or semi-custom, previously developed product and having it customized to your needs?

If you would like more information, let's have a phone call so I can better understanding your specific needs and point you in the right direction.

Do you have a marketing budget? If so, try Facebook's power editor to create very targeted newsfeed ads to educators. Don't push a traditional ad. Rather, push great tips and other relevant information. If you write a great short piece, it will lead to click-through's to your blog. Do a similar thing with LinkedIn.

On the organic side, join LinkedIn groups where educators gather. Participate in the discussions. Become a known collaborator.

Post your blog URL any chance you get. There are a lot of free directories. Most are worthless as a directory, but the link-backs do add a little SEO value.

Find out what your educators are using for search terms. Make sure your articles are relevant to those searches.

Create a YouTube video blog - something I am getting ready to do.

Bottom line: Do not "advertise" or self-promote per se. Become known as a content expert and community collaborator and people will start following your blog.

There are lots of ways to get readership. Give me a call if you would like to discuss the options further.

If you are operating an online store, building trust and confidence with your customer base is critical. So, when choosing a shopping cart to run your store, performance and availability are key.

When you use a quality, paid service like Magento or Shopify (or the myriad of others), you are paying for the solid infrastructure, the ongoing development and support.

With an open source cart, as you said you will have I do it yourself. You may not have the monthly subscription fee. But, you will have maintenance and development fees. You will also have infrastructure fees - if you plan to do it right.

If you would like to discuss this more, schedule a free call using my free consultation code below. I provide up to 30 minute calls at no charge for first time callers.

David hit the nail on the head. I have managed software teams on several occasions. I've been exposed to a good number of systems. The one I personally enjoyed is redmine. As a manager, it gave me quick and thorough information and visibility into daily production.

This answer is more of a testimonial. If you want more specific advice, I would definitely call David. He sounds like he can really help you.

P.s. Atlassian also offers hosted and self-hosted products with support. We started with them but once we hit the limit of 10 users, the price jumps significantly. That is when we switched to self-hosted Redmine. FYI

I have been involved in several saas projects. I still work with one of them. I have not found any standard ratios. It really depends on several factors including how intuitive is the product? How mission critical is the product to the subscribers daily workflow? What is the learning curve? What is the adoption rate? What is the average customer aptitude for your product, etc?

I can tell you that one client manages about 150 subscribers with one part time support person. I also have a contact that provides web hosting and manages about 800 hosted clients with one full time support person. But, te variables really skew these numbers.

If you would like to discuss this further at no charge, I offer a free 30 minute call to first time callers. Use this link.

Ah, as the ancient proverb says, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

You ask the insightful questions that most entrepreneurs, myself included, neglect to ask, in advance.

I started a cellular retail store in 1989 with a partner. This was when the first Motorola flip phone hit the market. It cost us $3100 wholesale. Yikes.

We were friends. Unfortunately, even though the business recorded taxable profits in such a short time, we shut it down after about 6 months due to irreconcilable differences between us. We were both too stubborn, me maybe more than him. Lesson: being friends is not enough. 1. Partners need to be completely in sync philosophically. 2. I have had partners since, but will never do 50/50 again. There needs to be a leader/decision maker. If both or all the partners think they are the leaders, you are just heading for a crash. That is not to say that the leader is independent. But, ultimately, someone needs to break the tie and make the decision.

As for outsourcing, when you are bootstrapping you end up doing more tasks than you would otherwise. If you have the funds, outsource everything that keeps you from your core competences. But, never put the destiny of your company entirely in someone else's hands. Keep controls in place and keep close tabs on the money. Don't abdicate growing the business for running the business.

As for learning things the hard way, is there any other way? Seriously though, I have learned to listen to my wife. Had I listened to her "discernment" when I was younger, I would not have made as many poor decisions as I did. As for another lesson, I purchased a full service hair salon many years ago. No, I am not in that profession. It was purely an economic decision. I sold it one year later for more than double my investment. However, I could have done significantly better and had less aggregations had I fired the salon manager. She had convinced me that she could run the place better than the previous owner. Unfortunately, she also rallied all the employees making it difficult for me to turn the ship around. I did it in spite of her. And, the next owner did replace her. Now I understand why top level people are often, not always, replaced in acquisitions. It is a soft skill, but I am more keenly aware of company culture and the influence of leadership now than I was 25 years ago.

Hope that sheds some light. If you woul like to chat further, give me a call using the free call link below.

Are you asking about the technology or the concepts? Chris asked about the technology. You need to develop great content that people are willing to pay for. Provide some of the best of your content for free to show people what you offer. Then, provide the balance of your content behind the veil of a membership.

You can also become an affiliate marketer and simply promote other people's content. Join JVZoo or CommissionJunction or others and start promoting. Let's schedule a call if you have any follow up questions. Wishing you all the best!

You are correct to not make any drastic changes at first. Meet with each team member to get to know them. Try to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses. Find out where they are at in comparison to the mission and vision of the company & unit. Consider using an assessment tool such as EverythingDiSC to provide a basis for how they can best work and communicate within the team. Look for any potential cancerous members - someone who might have a bad attitude to the point they will be a detriment to your leadership and the mission. If they can't be reprogrammed, replace them.

I always look for employee's strengths and desires and try to move them into positions that align with both. Attitude, aptitude and loyalty are more important than current skills in many cases. Skills can be trained.

Devise a plan after all your meetings and evaluations. Assuming you need to make changes, do so methodically and on a timeline that meets company objectives but is not abrupt - if possible. Sometimes a drastic shift is needed to shock teams into new paradigms. But, that would be the exception if you are a people leader. Lead people, manage systems.

If you would like to chat further, I provide free 30 minute consultations to first time callers. Use the link below.

That's a tough one. Although you may be presenting your idea to an honest executive, most likely there will be a team of people that would get involved in the decision process. It is more likely than not the company would execute the idea without you, assuming, of course, your idea has merit and would pencil out. Not all companies are self-serving, however. Maybe you'll find the right one to speak with?

Ideas/concepts are not worth as much as a proven model.

Now, if your idea is such that you are the rare talent or have the secure connections required to execute, that's a bit different. Yet, even that is not a guarantee.

Is your idea able to be patented? Is it a widget, formula, etc?

I would consult a corporate attorney with your idea to see if he or she is able to help.

Such great insight and wisdom! Kevin listened to me very closely and understood exactly what my vision is. He was able to analyze where I am in the life cycle of my startup and offered valuable unbiased opinion of our site and gave me his suggestions for some immediate actions. Also offered practical advice and encouragement for my current delay in monetization. Thanks, Kevin!

Firstly thank you Kevin for the fantastic call! We chatted for 30 minutes, I asked Kevin for his advice about non-paid advertising and the ideas he presented to me were nothing short of brilliant. I'll be seeking Kevin's advice again in the future. Thanks again for your time!